’As thaa likes, lass. But thaa knows hoo’s
fretted and prayed and worrited hersel a deal abaat
thee for mony a year. And if hoo deed afore th’
child were born we sud ne’er forgive aarsels.’

’Thaa’rt mebbe reet, lad. It’ll
pleaz her to know, and hoo’s bin a good mother
to thee.’

’Yi. Hoo’s often said as if hoo could
nobbud be a gron’mother hoo’d say, as
owd Simeon said, “Mine een hev sin Thy salvation."’

‘Well, we’ll go up and see her when th’
chapel loses to-morrow afternoon. Put that leet
aat, lad; it’s time we closed aar een.’

Matt turned down the lamp, and shot the bolt of his
cottage door, and followed his wife up the worn stone
stairway to the room above, to rest and await the
dawning of the Sabbath.

That night, as the moonbeams fell in silver shafts
through the little window, and filled the chamber
with a haze of subdued light, a mystic presence, unseen,
yet felt, filled all with its glory. The old
four-poster rested like an ark in a holy of holies,
its carved posts of oak gleaming as the faces of watching
angels on those whose weary limbs were stretched thereon.
The rugged features of Matt were touched into grand
relief, his hair and beard dark on the snowy pillow
and coverlet on which they lay. On his strong,
outstretched arm reposed she whom he so dearly, and
now so proudly, loved, her large, lustrous eyes looking
out into the sheeted night, her pearly teeth gleaming
through her half-opened lips, from which came and went
her breath in the regular rhythm and sweetness of
perfect health. Long after her husband slept
she lay awake, silently singing her own ’Magnificat’—­not
in Mary’s words, it is true, but with Mary’s
music and with Mary’s heart.

And then she slept—­and the moonbeams paled
before the sunrise, and the morning air stirred the
foliage of the trees that kissed the window-panes,
and little birds came and sang their matins, and another
of God’s Sabbaths spread its gold and glory over
the hills of Rehoboth.

II.

HOW DEBORAH HEARD THE NEWS.

It was Sabbath on the moors—­on the moors
where it was always Sabbath.

Old Mr. Morell used to say, ’For rest, commend
me to these eternal hills;’ and so Matt Heap
thought as he threw open his chamber casement and
looked on their outline in the light of morning glory.
Their majesty and strength were so passionless, their
repose so undisturbed. How often he wondered to
himself why they always slept—­not the sleep
of weariness, but of strength! And how often,
when vexed and jaded, had he shared their calm as his
eyes rested on them, or as his feet sought their solitudes!
How they stirred the inarticulate poetry of his soul!
At times he found himself wondering if their sweeping
lines were broken arcs of a circle drawn by an infinite
hand; and anon, he would ask if their mighty mounds
marked the graves of some primeval age—­mounds
raised by the gods to the memory of forces long since
extinct.